


Napkins are Important

by themisguidedgh0st



Series: Shots in The Dark [1]
Category: Carmilla (Web Series), Carmilla - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe, Clouds of fluff, Complete, F/F, First Meeting, Fluff, carmilla is a math genius, coffee shop AU, fluff master, laura struggles in math, shots in the dark series, super fluff
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-07-18
Updated: 2017-07-18
Packaged: 2018-12-03 14:30:18
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,092
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11534169
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/themisguidedgh0st/pseuds/themisguidedgh0st
Summary: Napkins are important. They really are.They clean up your messes, especially if it's tomato sauce or pasta sauce or even if you got pie on yourself. They clean your nose. They help you fall in love.Don't believe me on that last one?Well then, by all means, read ahead!





	Napkins are Important

"Laura, I'm telling you, keeping yourself cooped up in that tiny dorm room of yours will only make your math headache worse."

"It's only tiny to you, Danny because you're taller than the room itself"

"Tall jokes are never as good as the short ones, Hollis, never. Anyway, look this cafe has pie that is to die for, I'm telling you. I promise, whatever math issue you're having will be magically solved with a little distance from your dorm hole- I mean room."

You pout at Danny, only to find her grinning charmingly at you, her cheeks tinted a little pink. Nervously, and wanting to avoid any awkward moments, you look towards the cafe you both seemed to be in front of.

Even if you walked on George St. every day, you'd have never noticed this quaint little shop. It's only entrance point seemed to be one small, brown door squished between two very popular stores. The store on the left was Wilson and Son's Auto Parts and the store on the right was a good –old fashioned Rite Aid. The little brown door in the middle had a relatively small sign that read "Perrylicious" in fancy calligraphy.

Before you could really analyze the name and door any further, Danny pushed the door open and waited for you to walk in. The inside certainly seemed larger than on the outside. While it was still much smaller than the stores on either side of it, it was still quaint and homely.

There were a few customers and quite a few chairs and tables for patrons to sit on, but you only seemed to have eyes for the wide assortment of pastries.

Danny chuckled behind you "Told you this place was awesome. Now let's get some pie and you can study while eating Perry's pie. Go ahead and order. I'll choose a table for us"

As you were scanning and scrutinizing each pie, the barista called to you "Hey, welcome to...Perrylicious, how can I help you?"

All pies forgotten, you looked up to see where that smooth, velvet voice had come from and it seemed to have come from the gorgeous brunette right in front of you.

Remembering that you were in fact human and not a strange sloth drooling over pretty women, you shook your head to unscramble your brains and spoke to the brunette "Can I have a large Iced Latte please? Oh! And one of your strawberry pies?"

"Iced Latte, large and one fruit pie thing coming up. That'll be $6.25"

Danny was right. The coffee was made to perfection, minus an extra sugar boost which you always needed, and the pie was simply to die for. The only complaint you had was that Danny had not chosen a window seat and preferred window seats when studying.

Pie digested and last few sips of your latte in hand, you decide to take another crack at your math class.

Danny had left some time earlier, as soon as she finished her pie, claiming that she had some Summer Soc meeting she needed to get to.

Understanding Analysis by Stephen Abbot had to be the one book about Real Analysis that made no sense. It rushed through proofs without giving a proper, rigorous idea of how to even think about attempting certain theorems which made the class more difficult than it needed to be.

For instance, right now you had to deal with proving the Archimedean property using the Axiom of Completeness and you have no idea as to where to even start with that.

You sigh miserably as you take another sip from your latte and look around the cafe. There were still a few customers. The barista was still in front taking orders, making coffee, and so on. Staring at the math in your book only made your understanding worse. You yawn feeling sleepy and now exhausted.

Maybe going to Office Hours would help. You curse yourself for not having the foresight to bring extra paper to study, and grab a napkin and write the question.

"How would I prove the Archimedean Property using the Axiom of Completeness? How would knowing that there exists a least upper bound help me to prove that there exists some n>x?"

Once you yawn again, you decide to take a nap. After the nap, you could resume your torture. After all, naps are important. Sleepily you think ' _So are napkins.'_

  


* * *

Waking up in a coffee shop with a slight back ache and the owner of the coffee shop slightly concerned was definitely not in your top 10 wish list for university.

But it happened. The cafe owner, Lola Perry woke you up and promptly informed you that it was five minutes past closing time and if you stayed any longer, you'd be locked in.

Stretching and apologizing profusely, you gather your things haphazardly and shove them into your bag.

The napkin catches your attention. This was the napkin you wrote on.

The napkin that used to have only a question now was filled with what seemed to be an extensive proof of the Archimedean Property using the Axiom of Completeness. You see all the connections with little arrow signs and questions made specifically for you to focus on.

You look around the cafe and see no one.

The owner was busy putting on her coat. There was no one else in sight.

"Excuse me, Miss..." you call out to her

"Perry, dear. You can just call me Perry."

"Did you write this?"

You show the note to her. Well you more like trip over and practically shove it in her face, but essentially, you show her the note.

She frowns "Is this greek? What are all these symbols?"

You stare at her.

"Heavens no, dear. I'm not one for these kinds of things. I think that's math, based on that plus sign there, so I can tell you right now that it wasn't me. It might have been a customer or someone."

You sigh dramatically and walk slowly over to your backpack. You're about to stuff the napkin with your other notes but you think better of it and stuff it in your pocket.

Later, in your dorm, you open the napkin and carefully copy all the notes written on the napkin into a full proof in your notebook.

Staring at the napkin again, you notice two things. One, the handwriting on the napkin is incredible. The second is that this person has clearly read the same textbook as you have, because at the bottom they wrote "Stephen Abbot is a dick-hole, but the problems he assigns at the end of the sections are golden for actually learning this stuff. Try them out. It'll help"

You keep the napkin just in case you missed something. You keep it in its own box, in a special, secret place, totally because you think its special.

  


* * *

You find yourself at the cafe again with Danny.  


Many things are the same. You order the same drink, you still put the same amount of sugar in the drink after you get the drink.

You order the same pie. Danny leaves for the same reason. You're still there to study for your math class. You still have the same textbook. You still don't get anything in that class.

Math still makes you very sleepy when you don't understand it. You still don't bring enough paper to write all your questions and notes so you end up using a napkin again.

You still end up taking a nap.

This time, however, you were jolted awake by an orange-haired barista whose tag just read "LaFontaine".

"Hey there. You've been asleep for a while. Just wanted to make sure you were still somewhat conscious."

You grin at them a little sleepily "Thanks for waking me. Studying for math always makes me sleepy."

Their face lit up "Oh yeah no totally, when I was doing my Biochem degree, I totally zonked out any time anyone mentioned calculus. I totally get it."

You grin at them, relieved that someone actually understood your difficulty.

"Actually, the other barista, Karnstein is actually some kind of math genius. She could totally help you out you know"

Something about that name, Karnstein, clicked in your head. But you just couldn't really put your finger on i—

"LaFontaine! I need you in the kitchen immediately!"

The orange haired person turned around and shuffled quickly back towards the kitchen of the cafe.

It was starting to darken outside, so you decide that you'll continue your torture at home. You shove all your things in your bag and you're about to turn and leave when you notice the napkin again.

Full. Of a proof and a lengthy explanation of the questions that you had about your material.

You look around the cafe to see if any of the customers would match your look.

No one seemed to notice the sleep deprived human looking frantically around. Besides, none of them seemed like secret napkin writers anyway.

You tried looking at the staff again. The barista this time was not the same barista from whom you ordered the drink. This barista seemed like a frat-boy who wore his cafe baseball hat backwards and referred to all his customers as "dude".

His nametag reads "W. Kirsch" in scrawny chicken-scratch hand-writing. You think he didn't seem like the mathematical genius type.

Sighing, you resigned yourself to leave the cafe. Asking around didn't seem to be much of a possibility because everyone around you was engrossed in their own lives. The napkin writer, you think would at least spare a glance in your direction.

Even though you were unable to thank your currently shapeless and nameless math tutor, you still counted the proof as a victory.

Besides. It's not as if the napkin writer would do it again, right?

Except apparently not. For every day that you visited the cafe, with or without Danny by your side, you wrote a question on the napkin. And then you took a nap. Every time you woke up from the nap, the question was answered, sometimes in even more detail than your professor would have been able to give.

After about a month and a half, you talk to a friend.

"So basically, you're using this napkin person as your own personal tutor, without paying them...And you're not even using your own paper? Way to go Hollis"

Your roommate Betty commends you after you explain your cafe situation to her.

"That's not exactly the most helpful commentary, Bets"

"Because you know that I'm the most helpful and considerate person in the world"

"Well..."

"Exactly"

You were silent for a few seconds before Betty spoke again, this time with an actual idea, one that might work.

"This time, when you ask your dumb math question, ask the napkin writer a question"

"A question? Like...their favorite color?"

"Seriously Hollis? No, like their name...or at least their pronouns. I can't believe I've been referring to this person as 'Napkin Writer' it's so lame"

"Doesn't that ruin the mystery though?"

Your roommate stares at you for a long second. She blinks. "Ok. I'm gonna go for a jog now. Maybe when I return your brain would have returned from its life-long vacation away from your head."

You sigh, as betty grabs her water bottle and shuts the door behind her. You think Betty's idea wasn't bad, but you wanted to be able to spot the napkin writer before you know who they are. It felt like cheating just to ask them who they were.

So you never did.

But you didn't entirely let go of Betty's idea. The next time you went to the cafe, and ordered an Iced Latte from the beautiful brunette who still made your knees weak and whose small smirk made your insides feel like the jelly in the pie you also ordered every time. (You notice that for the past month or so, your Iced Latte had become significantly sweeter, much to your appreciation. It was probably just a recipe thing though. Maybe lots of other people liked sweeter Iced Lattes too.) This time you wrote down your question and a little side note.

It didn't take long for you to resume your cafe schedule. Math made you sleepy like no other.

This time, when you woke up, the note was different.

For one, it was not on a napkin, it was on a yellow paper, the kind you rip off from legal pads. The proof that was written was long, with five different claims and including diagrams and intervals. However, just like all the other napkins, this made the textbook proof look like a group of letters that were thrown into a blender.

For two, there was a greeting at the top of the note which read "Hey there creampuff," which made you red till the tip of your nose. You seemed to resemble the cafe's famous red velvet cupcakes.

For three, there was an answer to your side note which made grin and your insides twist into a pretzel.

This time, you didn't look around to see if there was anyone looking your way.

But maybe if you had turned around, you'd have seen the gorgeous brunette staring at you with her cheeks tinted pink, and a slight smile on face that brought out the contrast in her eyes.

* * *

The notes go on for another month and a half. But things are slightly different now. You decide to make a list.

  1. Danny is now dating a nice girl who takes up a lot of her time, Sarah Jane, you believe her name was  

  2. You go to the cafe every other day  

  3. The notes that you receive are no longer on napkins. They're on yellow legal pad notes. But you still write on the napkins. Every single time.  

  4. The notes are still very proof-y but they also information about the writer on them. Every question you asked about the writer was answered.  

  5. You got the impression that the writer seemed to care a great deal about you.  

  6. You don't ever get the napkins that you write on, back. It seems as if the writer is keeping them. (Well at this point you know the writer is a girl. You can call her she)  

  7. You have _no clue_ who the mathematician is.  

  8. You have an uncharacteristically large crush on her.  

  9. Like Huge. Ginormous. Incredibly enormous.  

  10. You also have a crush on the barista who orders your drink _every single time._ Most days she even has it ready for you with a slice of pie and an extra packet of sugar for you just in case.  




But two weeks before finals meant that you were wracking and wrecking your brain for this class harder than you've ever done before. And you already took your nap and you have your long note from your favorite mathematician, but you're still at the cafe, two downed Iced Lattes and an entire section of Compact Sets still left to cover.

You head to the bathroom to relieve the Iced Lattes from your system when you accidentally hear a very _interesting conversation._

"Dude, come on, it's been like four months"

"What are you even talking about"

You immediately recognize your barista's voice. Well. _The_ barista. She wasn't yours.

"Come on, Karnstein, you've written her the entire textbook by now. You've got to say something real in those long-ass love letters you write to her every time she's here"

You think the other barista's voice matches that of the short, orange-haired barista who sometimes wakes you up when the cafe closes.

"Seriously, LaF? Love letters? I'm literally tutoring her"

"Tutoring implies some form of contact. You know, other than writing lengthy proofs on a goddamn napkin. Or your stupid yellow pad."

"Whatever, this conversation is over"

"Does she at least know your name, Karnstein?"

"Well...I've got to keep my air of mystery somehow, right?"

"Sure, sure, super mysterious broody lesbian"

You almost gasped aloud. The gorgeous barista and the mathematician were the same person.

That beautiful specimen was clearly some kind of prodigy.

And she was gay. So she was hand-crafted by Zeus. Clearly.

With that, you quietly slipped out of the bathroom, and formulated a plan.

A solid, fool-proof get the girl _and_ the pie kind of plan.

* * *

Finals were over. You finished your last Financial Economics final just about 30 minutes ago and you're exhausted, you're bone tired, you're not sure when your last proper meal was, you had to move out, your dad was waiting for you impatiently at home, Betty needed you to clear your side of shit out, but after your exam, you immediately went to "Perrylicious"

"One Iced Latte for the house-sleeper" your favorite barista called out as soon as you walked into the cafe.

"Oooh, not anymore, my finals are over. I'm all set. No more Real Analysis" you took your drink and pie gleefully and sat at your usual corner, this time not having to take out Stephen Abbot's awful text.

The barista had stuttered before agreeing, which seemed a bit odd for you, but you kept to your script. This plan had to be implemented perfectly.

While eating your pie, and sipping your latte, you wrote carefully on the napkin, without making a single mistake.

On the back, you signed it carefully.

Now you wait. While pretending to check your phone, you keep a watch on the barista.

Your moment comes when the brunette walks back inside the kitchen and the orange-haired barista, LaF walks out to attend to customers.

You almost rush to them.

"Excuse me...LaF, right?"

They turn around to you, surprised to see you address them. Without fully introducing yourself and cutting your prepared speech short by about 50%, you confront them

"I know you know who my mystery mathematician barista is"

A grin slowly forms on their face. It's slightly devilish.

"Yeah? What about her?"

You bring the napkin to LaF carefully "Could you give this to her. And tell her I'll be where I am usually"

The ginger nods, still with the Cheshire grin. Breathing a sigh of relief, you return to your seat with your latte and your pie and you wait.

You just wait. Customers start to leave at around half an hour till closing time. You start to fidget in your seat. Maybe you made a mistake. Maybe she was _just_ trying to help you. Maybe she just wanted to be friends. Oh god, she just wasn't interested in y—

"Miss Hollis?"

You jumped about 3 feet in the air. You probably were taller than Danny for a hot second. A young British boy with shaggy hair stood in front of you, nametag reading "J.P"

"Forgive me, Miss Hollis I didn't mean to startle you, but I was told to tell you to wait till after closing for a few seconds"

Your heart started to thud in your chest. You nod shakily and the boy gives you a nervous grin before shuffling back to the kitchen.

You try to distract yourself with your phone, but nothing is even remotely interesting to you now that your heart is on the line a bit and it's getting dark outside and what if the barista didn't really mean it that way and—

"Hey there creampuff,"

The beautiful brunette barista was standing in front of you holding a slightly worn out shoebox in one hand, wearing a small nervous smile, not her regular smirk.

You stood up to her height. "Hey"

"So I got your napkin"

Your heart thudded in your chest. You'd worry if you weren't so invested in her softness of her eyes.

"I'm glad we're on the same page"

"So...you...uh...um...the..."

And now we introduce ladies, gentlemen and all gentle-people, _the_ Laura Hollis, master of articulation and finesse.

She grins and you lose the ability to even form the few syllables you were able to form in the first place.

She holds out her hand for you to shake "Carmilla Karnstein"

You manage to remember your name "Laura Hollis"

She smirks and you need to sit down immediately "I know, creampuff. I've only been making your order for the past four months"

You really need to work on your blush. It ruins any chance you have at a poker-face.

She sits down in front of you and holds the shoebox reverently out in front of her "So...These...are...the questions ...you ...in case...you wanted to know...that...um...Ikeptallofthem"

You look into her shoe box. All of the napkins were there. All of your questions. Including the last one you had sent to her via LaF. It was lengthy proof of the Axiom of Completeness proving the Archimedean Property, the first question you had ever asked her, but what you thought was a more coherent proof than what she gave. On the back was your phone number and the message "Maybe sometime I can show you how I constructed a better proof than you did over dinner ~ "

You were nearly teary. You also realize that you haven't spoken since she showed them to you and you needed to leave immediately.

You placed the lid on the shoebox carefully, grabbed your bag and her _hand_ and raced out of the cafe with her in tow.

You both ran all the way to your dorm. You notice that she didn't even question your motives, which was probably a good idea, because if she did, you'd have probably kissed her.

You drag her all the way up to your room, barge right in and dive immediately under your bed for the special box in which you kept all of her letters.

When she opens the box and immediately looks towards you, you note that she's looking at you like you put the stars in the sky for her and you can't take it anymore.

Clearly neither can she.

Maybe it's just you. Or maybe it's just her. Or maybe it's the fact that neither of you can seem to stop kissing the other.

But it seems like Stephen Abbot is one hell of a match maker.

  


* * *

  


_5 years later:_

"Hey cupcake, do you need anything else from the kitchen before we start the marathon?"

You shake your head in the negative before returning your attention to the television screen before you. Marathons needed concentration and you needed to focus. Especially Harry Potter marathons.

Just as Carm walked back from the kitchen and plopped on the couch with a loud sigh of relief, she groaned.

"Nooooooooo"

You looked at your adorable, broody girlfriend in amusement. "What, Carm?"

She looked at you sheepishly "I forgot the napkins"

You rolled your eyes "How could you, Carm?"

"Could you, cupcake, pleeeasseee?"

You sigh and get up to get the entire stand of napkins for your girlfriend. The stand seemed a bit heavier than normal but you paid no mind to the weight and set it on the coffee table in front of you.

"Creampuff could you just hand me the top napkin? It's closer to you."

You do.

Only to find that underneath the napkin was a small, navy blue, square box sitting firmly inside the napkins. It seemed as though someone carved through an entire set of napkins to place the small blue box there.

Setting the napkin to the side, your curiosity took over and you removed the small blue box from it's frame and opened it.

Inside was a ruby-encrusted diamond ring.

An _engagement ring._

Looking over to the right where you set down the napkin, you see the words "Will you marry me?" written on the napkin.

You look sharply to your left and your girlfriend of the last five years is kneeling before you, smiling shakily and reaching for the small blue box.

You're about to scream. It's going to be really difficult to hold it in.

"Laura Hol--"

You scream. It somehow ends up turning into a series of yeses and you launch yourself on your girlfriend kissing her thoroughly.

"Can you put it on me?"

She holds your hand reverently and slides the ring into place and you realize you never let her actually propose.

"I love you Laura"

"I love you too"

You don't think she ever really needed to. There was never any question of who you'd marry. There'd be no one but her.

Right from the first napkin. After all, napkins are important.

_Fin._

**Author's Note:**

> Hilo!  
> So It seems that I tend towards Carmilla being a math prodigy since this is the second time I wrote about her being a mathy type.  
> I need to blow off some steam every now and then and since I have a folder with a bunch of AU types taking up space, I thought I'd post some of them here.  
> And besides, no writer is a real writer without a coffee shop au ;)  
> Enjoy!


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